textured fill palette?

Is it readily possible in X5 to create a palette of textured fills--not the individual colors of each fill but the pattern itself? A palette, not just a collection of fills to be applied manually.

Reason I ask: My primary use for Corel X5 is woodworking's Marquetry, making pictures of small laser-cut pieces of wood veneers of different species. One project may contain a thousand pieces from over a hundred different species.

The typical method to use Corel for the file is: a bitmap is imported, traced by hand or Corel to form a vector image, hairline outline added, then each piece cut from veneers on the laser. Despite choosing veneers that match colors in the original bitmap to the extent possible, one never knows what the marquetry piece will really look like until it is completed--which can be days or weeks later.

I have discovered how to change the colors of the imported bitmap to wood veneer solid colors by creating and saving a My Palettes palette of wood veneer colors from jpg's, choosing for each species the predominant color in the jpg; then clicking Bitmaps-->Mode-->Paletted 8 Bit; in the following screen opening the Palettes button and selecting my Wood Veneers palette; and finally clicking OK. The bitmap takes on only the colors of the Wood Veneers palette. Then Outline Trace as usual, and I can see fairly well how the completed marquetry piece will look. By choosing to group colors during the Outline Trace, I have a vector grouped by each species.

But rather than all those colors appearing solid, it would be a more accurate depiction if the vector image displayed other features of each wood species, such as grain, burl patterns, heartwood vs. sapwood, etc.

Anyway, that's why the question.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Best, Ted

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  • Hi Ted, I also work in wood and I use draw and photo paint a lot in design etc if I have a veneer and I want to use that veneer in a job I normally scan a section and add to my fill list I will write a quick tutorial and post soon

    enjoy

    Joe
    Windows XP Professional
    version 2002
    service pack 3.
    Pentium 4/2.8 Ghz
    1GB RAM

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